Let’s be absolutely honest, girls and boys. All that mascara does is coat eyelashes with coloured stuff. The darker colour makes lashes more noticeable, particularly the tips which are too thin to be seen normally. Add a coat of gloop and you have instant volume.

It’s like putting spraypaint on a spiderweb. It doesn’t *actually* have any effect on the lashes.

[Trivia: One of the first successful mascara products was essentially coal dust mixed with Vaseline.]

Not to say that there’s no product differentiation; you still have to worry about factors like clumping, smudging, how well it holds shape and whether the brush gives smooth coverage.

Pretty much all the rest of the claims are made up.

My favourite con is the double-ended mascara with a white ‘primer’ and black ‘mascara’.

It stands to reason that if you give your eyelashes two coats of mascara they’ll look thicker. Less women get these kind of results, mostly because they can’t be bothered.

‘Primer’ solves this. You might notice that it’s always white. This is so that once you’ve applied it you need to apply about twice as much product so that you don’t look like a freak who has black and white eyelashes.

So it DOES make your eyelashes look thicker…because you’ve applied about three times the usual amount of product.

The pure evil in this is that it looks like you’re getting more per stick thing and being charged accordingly. But no. On comparison of my mascaras, the normal tube contains 6.2mLs, compared to 3.5mLs each of primer and mascara (which will be used twice as quickly).

But no matter. We’ll continue buying it, because it promises us a better way of life…and if we just keep thinking that, it will.

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Mascara is without a doubt my least-favourite item of makeup. I don’t wear much of any makeup so my mascara lasts a long time but I’ve never managed to purchase one that didn’t start to clump after one week of eyelash-coating action.
I’d love to find a mascara that honestly, truly stays clump-free until the tube is almost empty – but it’s SO expensive!
I’ll go three weeks with a clump-fest on my eyes because I’m waiting for the cheapest brand of mascara to go on sale at Woolies. $12 is the most I like to pay (would like to pay). Can’t recall the last time I paid less than $16.
And I have girlfriends who regularly pay $60 for fancy brands. I’d like to know if they’re really far more advanced than Covergirl, Revlon etc.
If anyone ever hears of a place you can bulk-purchase mascara for wholesale prices – let’s all chuck in and stock up!!

Definitely with you on this one! Word on the street is that with the more expensive mascaras what you’re mostly paying for is packaging – and I’ll admit that if it has a catchier name and comes out of a prettier tube I feel just a little bit better – but mostly it’s just not worth it.

I think the brush makes a bit of difference and nylon fibres seems vaguely plausible but when it comes to Givenchy’s ball-and-chain style rubber brush and the new vibrating mascaras it starts getting ridiculous!